The National Confectioners Association (NCA) will recognize Christina Groth of The Kroger Co. and Brian Rinker from The Walgreen Co. as recipients of the 2017 Confectionery Leadership Awards. The award celebrates the honorees’ contributions to the category through their effective business collaboration, category management best practices and innovations in merchandising confectionery products in-store. Groth, VP, […]
Category: Industry News
Up-And-Coming Buying Cohort Prefers To Shop In Store, Study Finds
Despite expectations that the first “digitally native” generation would want to shop online, a new study by IBM and the National Retail Federation (NRF) finds that nearly all members of Generation Z prefer to shop in brick-and-mortar stores. With the global Gen Z population set to reach 2.6 billion by 2020, retailers need to create […]
Millennials Will Pay More For Personal, Environmental Health Attributes
Millennial shoppers are concerned with both personal and environmental health and are willing to pay extra for products that are sustainable. This is one of hundreds of findings in “What’s in Store 2017,” the latest edition of the annual trends publication from the International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association (IDDBA). Other findings in the book’s “Consumer Lifestyles” chapter include: […]
Non-Food For Thought: Why Make HBW Your Top New Year’s Resolution?
by Naomi Sleeper/director of business development, Imperial Distributors According to an Acosta study commissioned by the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), sales of health, beauty and wellness (HBW) products total $84 billion annually. Grocery retailers only capture about $15 billion of those sales. This means a big opportunity for supermarkets to increase their share of HBW sales. […]
Amazon Go Experiment Challenges Retailers To Test New Innovations
by Marek Polonski/SVP, Applied Predictive Technologies E-commerce giant Amazon is striving to make the dream of a streamlined shopping experience a reality with the recent debut of Amazon Go, a brick-and-mortar grocery and convenience store leveraging technology to eliminate checkout lines. At Amazon Go’s physical location, the store’s technology detects when products are picked up […]
Supervalu Sees Rise In Wholesale Segment As Retail Sales Continue To Falter
Supervalu’s third quarter wholesale sales increased slightly vs. a year ago, but its retail segment continued to struggle. Total net sales within the wholesale segment increased 0.2 percent, to $1.91 billion from $1.90 billion a year ago. New business is outpacing lost business, the company said. Retail identical store sales were negative 5.7 percent, dropping […]
Northgate Markets, Emerson Partner To Bring Food Waste Recycling System To California
Northgate Markets offers its shoppers a wide selection of fresh, healthy food like guacamoles and ceviches, but that creates a dilemma: What should be done with the food scraps? For Northgate Markets, these scraps add up quickly: Just one store in the Southern California chain uses six cases of avocados each day to prepare guacamole […]
Lloyd, Goelzer To Hold Supermarket Management Class 2.0 In May
Longtime grocery educator Harold Lloyd of Harold Lloyd Presents and Paulo Goelzer, president of the IGA Coca-Cola Institute, are teaming up to present Supermarket Management Class 2.0 in Chicago in May. Lloyd, who created the course about 15 years ago, used to hold the class in January, but saw an opportunity this year, with FMI […]
La Huerta USA Creates, Grows Brands By Touting Company’s Care For Its Products And People
by Kristen Cloud/web editor Galen Walters met the Arteaga family in 2008 in The Woodlands, Texas. The family that in 1957 founded the vegetable and specialty foods company La Huerta—based in Aguascalientes, Mexico—came to The Woodlands to be nearer family. It didn’t take long for Walters, a 40-year veteran in business operations and retail marketing […]
SMC Of San Francisco And NorCal Food Brokers Merging
The Sales Managers Club of San Francisco (SMC) held its last Hi-Jinks luncheon in December. The Hi-Jinks event is not going away, but will be sponsored by a new organization this year—the Northern California Food Industry Sales Association (FISA). FISA is the new organization formed by the merger of SMC and the Northern California Food […]
Bi-Lo, Winn-Dixie Mark Anniversary Of ‘Down Down’ Pricing Promotion
Bi-Lo and Winn-Dixie stores are celebrating the first birthday of “Down Down,” the grocers’ “pricing promise to not only lower prices, but keep them down for at least six months,” according to parent company Southeastern Grocers. Ian McLeod, president and CEO of Southeastern Grocers, said, “We know grocery prices are important to our customers, and […]
Brookshire Grocery Co. Names New Division, District Managers For Super 1 Foods
Tyler, Texas-based Brookshire Grocery Co. (BGC) has promoted two of its leaders to division and district manager roles. Ronny Hurst will serve as division manager for the company’s 34 Super 1 Foods stores, and Jay Holmes is now district manager for Super 1 Foods stores in central and south Louisiana. Hurst is a 38-year employee […]
Baldor Specialty Foods Eliminates Food Waste From Production Facility
Baldor Specialty Foods, a New York City produce processor and distributor, has diverted 100 percent of the organic waste generated in its Fresh Cuts operation from landfill—thanks to its food waste initiative known as SparCs (the word “scraps” spelled backward). SparCs is a waste prevention strategy developed by Baldor’s sustainability director, Thomas McQuillan. Baldor processes […]
Brick Meets Click: Supermarket Online Sales Are Strong
Multichannel supermarkets generated larger online orders than online-only grocers, according to a recent benchmarking study from Brick Meets Click. More than half of the banners in the study reported average online orders between $120 and $180, compared to the average order size recently reported for Fresh Direct ($105) and Amazon Fresh ($84). The study compared […]
Lidl Could Be Coming To Texas, So Here’s What You Need To Know
Lidl has established its U.S. headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, and it is building warehouses in Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia. The new-to-the-U.S. retailer has said it will begin opening stores in 2018, but it is possible some could debut in late 2017. Lidl has about 80 store locations (some say as many as 150) picked […]
Fresh Thyme To Open More Than 20 Midwest Stores In 2017
Fresh Thyme Farmers Market will operate 70 stores by the end of 2017 as it opens more than 20 new locations. Since coming on the scene in 2014, the retailer has opened 48 stores, with 20 new stores and more than 2,000 new hires in 2016 alone. It has locations in 10 states, including Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, […]
Total Sales Up Slightly, Net Income Down For Ingles’ Fiscal Year
Asheville, North Carolina-based Ingles Markets, operating 201 stores in six states in the Southeast, reported fourth quarter and fiscal year results for the period ended Sept. 24. In a news release Dec. 16, Ingles said total sales for fiscal 2016 were $3.79 billion vs. $3.78 billion in fiscal 2015. Net income for the year was $54.2 […]
Porter’s Thriftway Invites Customers To Hold It Accountable
A new 35,000-s.f. Porter’s Thriftway with unique architecture has opened in Big Spring, Texas. The Shelby Report’s Ron Johnston recently toured the airy store with Trae Porter, a third-generation grocer with the family business. The gleaming Porter’s Thriftway, a former Safeway, started out in rough shape, Porter told Johnston. “It was scary looking. There was […]
Grocery Trends Forecast Reveals Creative Changes In 2017
More digital connections and a speedier checkout process rank among the top trends for grocery shopping in 2017. That’s according to veteran supermarket analyst John Karolefski, purveyor of GroceryStories.com. Karolefski also predicts a more diverse produce department, increased availability of meal kits and better access to product information. “The top trends for 2017 will result in […]
Americans Again Rank Fuel Savings As Their Favorite Loyalty Program Reward
For the second year in a row, American consumers have identified rewards that help them save on the everyday cost of fuel as their preferred loyalty program currency. Findings from Excentus’ new “Road to Rewards Revisited” annual survey and report also show that certain types of rewards are powerful enough to influence where, when and […]
